The Spanish Bride

[jmc_bks]

The Spanish Bride by Georgette Heyer



This is a reissue by Sourcebooks, a trade paperback with a gorgeous cover. It is a fictionalized account of Harry Smith, a Brigade-Major in Wellington's Peninsular Army, and his wife, Juana, whom he met after the third siege of Badajoz. The book covers only their courtship and early marriage.

Being Spain obsessed, this seemed like a good book for me. And it was in one sense -- I appreciated the narrative describing the Peninsular campaign. The life of an army on the move was very well drawn. (Or so says a reader who knows little about military history or logistics.) As a Regency romance novel, the book failed. I felt vaguely squicked by the fact that Juana was 14 to Harry's mid to late 20s, and his paternalistic attitude combined with the fact that he called her hija magnified the squickage for me.

On the language front, I was not impressed with Heyer's prose. It wasn't awful, but neither was it particularly artful. And her smattering of Spanish phrases seemed not quite right. Having made it clear that Harry and Juana speak to each other in Spanish (because her English is very poor), why throw in the odd Spanish phrase after several lines of dialogue in English?

I think Heyer is not for me. Her humor and comedies of manners are highly touted as the original traditional regency novels, but I find them to be brittle and not very engaging. Of course, the traditional regency is not a favorite subgenre for me, so maybe this is to be expected.

C+ for me.

For more information about Harry and Juana Smith, check out this page.

Comments

[jmc-bks.livejournal.com]

I skipped that discussion (I usually read even if I don't participate) because I just can't get into Heyer. All of her books have been either DNF or meh. This one was slightly better, but I get the impression that it is rather different from all of her other stuff, so I shouldn't take it as a sign that I ought to keep trying.